Shadow Riders, The Southern Plains Uprising, 1873 (34 page)

Looking up, Donegan found his horse on the far side of the narrow stream, tossing its head in fury at the air filled with burning cinders. The government man's horse was nowhere to be found. Reaching down, Seamus snagged the back of Graves's collar and dragged him across the pebbled stream bottom then up the bank as Stillwell appeared out of the thick smoke.

“He dead?”

“I don't think so,” Seamus replied breathlessly. “Just a good soaking.”

“Where's his animal?”

Donegan shrugged. “Looks like I'll have to carry him meself till we reach the wagon.”

“They're covering ground. I came back when Pierce told me he was turning 'round to find something he'd left—and that you was coming back to help him.”

“I came back to save his bleeming hide, Jack.”

“Looks like that's what you've done,” he said, dropping from the saddle and grabbing hold of the civilian. Unconscious, Graves still growled, an animal-like sound at the back of his throat.

“Is he coming to?”

“Sounds like it,” Jack said, hoisting the man up as Donegan pulled on the civilian's arms until they had him slung over the Irishman's legs.

“He ever find what he was willing to die for, Seamus?”

“Figure he did: I saw him pick something off the ground—but I still don't know what it was he tucked under his arms just before the fire got to him.”

“He's still holding it,” Jack said.

Sure enough, Graves clutched his cloth-wrapped treasure beneath one arm, the other drooping off the far side of the horse.

“Was it worth the trouble, Graves?” Stillwell asked after he came around Donegan's horse to take up his own reins.

Graves growled again, a wordless, predatory sound as the air filled with suffocating heat.

“Let's get, Seamus!” Stillwell hurled himself into the saddle without using the stirrup. He wrenched his horse around and was off, slapping the rear of the Irishman's mount.

The fire was starting to jump the creek in fits and starts.

Above the dry, leafless brush and trees, the air grew choked with soot and live embers, driven across the stream on the back of the tireless wind. A wind made hotter and stronger by the fire itself. A wind that acted like some monstrous tongue of heat searing everything in its path even before the flames came in to finish the destruction.

Behind Donegan now arose a renewed rumble, the fire regaining strength and speed as it lurched across the stream and grabbed hold on the east bank after faltering for only a moment. Like a phoenix rising from its own ash, the great wall of flame rose once more, yellow-red fingers clawing at the prairie grass, almost laughing as it strained to run down more of the wild, frightened creatures driven before it's death song.

Far ahead of them through the smoky haze, Seamus could make out the wagon and the horsemen, gold dust spun up from the four iron tires as the sky continued to darken. Behind him arose the rumble of what he recognized as thunder. A low, long blat that for but a moment overpowered the roar of the grass fire. Splitting the air with its might, then gone as quickly as it had come.

Stillwell reined around at him, his face taut with strain, waving Donegan on frantically. “I gotta leave you behind!” he spat his voice into the robbing wind. “Don't wanna,” and he pointed at the soldiers far ahead, “but that bunch is going off in the wrong direction!”

“Go—I'll come along as fast as I can.”

Stillwell glanced down at the semiconscious Graves slung across Donegan's saddle. His eyes found the Irishman's, showing his grave concern and earnest affection. “You have to—just leave the bastard behind. Get yourself out.”

“Go on, Jack! Get!” he shouted into the oncoming roar of the fire that already heated the cold winter morning beyond anything the sun itself could do.

“That way!” Stillwell shouted as he leapt away, an arm out. “Point yourself that way!”

Cinders and ash, antelope and deer and cottontails all hurried past his plodding horse, handicapped and sidestepping with the ungainly double weight.

“By the saints,” he muttered to himself, feeling the heat growing at his back, afraid to turn around and see for himself, “I've got the notion to leave you behind myself, Graves.”

“But you won't, will you?”

Seamus was surprised at the answer to his question. Seamus said, “Coming to, are we?”

“I've never experienced such exquisite pain before!” he growled. “Just hurry this blasted horse up or we'll both have problems.”

“No—
we
won't, Graves,” he replied, shifting the smaller man's weight across his thighs. “You give me any trouble, I'll leave you off here for the fire, just like Stillwell—”

The words caught in mid-sentence as he felt a twinge of something unexpected and looked down at William Graves, finding a derringer jammed into his rib cage, just below his heart.

“Just a reminder, Donegan—how badly I want to make it out of here alive, you see. Now ride, goddammit!”

The minutes crawled by and still there was no change in his odds. The army escort and wagon and Stillwell all had disappeared beyond, somewhere in the rolling swales of prairie grassland soon to become blackened wilderness. And behind him roared the angry flames. For but a moment he thought back to another moment of helpless fear he had managed to swallow down—another fire he had stared in the face, set that time by Cheyenne Indians near the hayfield corral a few miles from Fort C. F. Smith on the Bighorn River, M. T. Montana Territory.
*

Praying now in his own way that the wind would come up as it had then. Just such a wind to slap at this fire, snuffing it before it came any closer.

But this time the wind conspired in deadly partnership with the flames, driving them to a fury, speeding them on their eastward path, swallowing everything in their wake.

The prairie ahead of him was alive with the small creatures, throbbing, falling, running over one another to escape the searing heat. Some had patches of hair burnt off, ugly patches still smoldering as they scurried past, falling then rising to run again blindly. Some with paws reddened, bloody flesh raw from running across blackened, smoking grassland in making their escape from burrows and dens.

“Seamus!”

Through the haze of black smoke and fiery cinders that burnt his eyes to the point of blindness, seared his lungs to the point he hesitated taking his next breath, he thought he heard Jack Stillwell's voice.

“Here! Over here, Irishman!”

There was a second voice yelling to him. Then a third and fourth, screaming out—giving directions in the murky light.

A gust of sudden, shifting wind brought another low blat of thunder to his ears, somewhere behind him. Odd that it would rain this time of the year, he thought, his weeping eyes still straining into the darkness ahead for the disembodied voices.

“Goddamn you, Seamus.”

Then Stillwell was beside him, yanking on the weary horse's bridle. A pair of soldiers were dragging Graves off the animal and into their arms, half carrying him, half dragging his half-burnt body toward a dark scar on the prairie.

“Where the divil—”

“Just c'mon—it's our only chance!”

Stillwell did not wait for a reply but began to run faster, his boots kicking up the dry dust in shallow puffs as he pulled on the Irishman's bridle. Seamus let the horse have its head, clutching the horn in sudden, overwhelming weariness as they reached the steep edge of a dry washout. For a moment he saw Jack's face swim before him in the black smoke billowing over them like grease smoke off a pork fire. But he could not hear a word the scout was saying—so loud was the hammering freight train of the on-rushing flames now. So close behind them that he felt it on his neck like never before, smelled the acid stench of hair burning and didn't know if it was the horse or if he were on fire.

Really didn't matter when the animal suddenly collapsed on its rear haunches just over the abrupt lip of the washout, catapulting the Irishman against the far side. He shook his head, clearing his eyes to find the horse sliding on its side coming down to the bottom, its legs thrashing, its tail smoldering.

Jack was pulling on his arm, forming wordless, open-mouthed orders he could not hear. But he understood. Without looking back, they hurried together down the washout toward the others, already clustered in the deepest part.

For the past few minutes the soldiers had been busy at what Stillwell had ordered them to do: some to haul out the thousands of rounds of ammunition and hurriedly bury it a hundred yards down the narrow washout, bury it as deeply as they could in the time they had left them. Others he ordered to pull free the canvas wagon cover; drag out a blanket for every man, including the Irishman and Graves; splinter open the tops of the water barrels and use cups or coffeepots or their kepis, but use something to soak the canvas and especially the blankets. The commissary sergeant and another soldier freed the last of the animals, slapping them into motion, driving them on down the washout.

“We gonna lose the animals, Jack?”

Stillwell nodded. “Likely we will.”

Seamus ground his teeth, feeling the surge of fear rise in him like vomit. “It'll be all right, Jack.”

A brave grin crossed the scout's face. “Damn right, it will.” He whirled on the others. “Everyone got their blanket sopping wet?”

A chorus of frightened men answered. Their eyes smarted, flecks of burning grass and fiery cinder drifting down into the sharp-sided coulee, dancing on the furious wind created by the prairie fire.

“We ain't got no more time to do anything more!” Stillwell shouted. “Get under the wagon! Every one of you.” They started moving, slowly. Too slowly. “Hurry up, dammit!”

“Wrap yourself in your blanket when you get under the sowbelly!” Donegan ordered, the skin on his cheeks reddened with the unimaginable heat, stretched taut like rawhide. He could barely hear himself talk, not knowing if anyone else could.

“It's your turn!” Jack hollered.

“You first, son!”

“Don't be no hero again, Irishman!”

“Me?”

Then the roar of those flames jumping the coulee slapped Donegan to the ground, with one blow hammering the air from his lungs. He was stunned, shaking his head, robbed of breath as he realized the others were pulling him under the soaked, dripping canvas wagon sheet.

“Sweet Mother of Jesus,” he muttered. “I've fought the best of 'em—but I've never been knocked down like that.”

“You've never fought a bitch woman before,” the old sergeant's voice growled in the darkness beneath the wagon and canvas.

“You're daft, ol' dodger! I'd never fight a woman.”

“Just what the hell you think Mother Nature is, if she ain't a bitch a'times.”

Some of them laughed, and the laughter died quickly, swallowed, sucked right out of them all, by a renewed rush of roaring fire passing overhead, consuming everything. Even the air they desperately needed to live.

The fire took his breath away, the super-heated air searing his lungs. Seamus didn't know if he could hold out. He heard some of the others crying in the sudden, frightening darkness, and he knew how they felt. He did not want to die here in the darkness either. Better in the light of day, staring down your enemy.

Instead of crying, Donegan bit down on a bit of the soaked blanket he had wrapped around himself and chewed, sucking air through it. Chewing to loosen some more water, then sucking in another breath of air.

Time passed. How slowly time passed.

Chapter 26

Early November 1873

He was sniffling, his nose weepy, eyes burning with the smoke, knowing this must truly be Hell—at least purgatory itself … when he finally realized the deafening roar was fading.

Seamus Donegan swallowed hard, then took another small breath. The air not so hot now.

Slowly he peeled the hot, damp blanket back from his face. Peering up at the bottom of the wagon and the canvas sheeting they had stretched out tent fashion to drape over them all.

“Jack?”

Stillwell poked his head out like a tortoise emerging from his shell. He blinked, cocking his head to listen. “I think it's gone over us, Seamus.”

“Praise God and the Virgin Mary.”

“You pray while you was under there?”

“By damn, we all did, son!” growled the sergeant who came out of hiding.

“Is it safe now?” asked Lieutenant Stanton.

“Let's go see for ourselves, Irishman,” Stillwell suggested. “Rest of you wait here.”

Throwing back the edge of the canvas wagon cover, Seamus squinted into the murky light, brighter now than it had been ever since yesterday at sunset. This morning's sunrise never had a chance to light the land.

Donegan felt like a boiled potato wrapped in the steamy, wet blanket—his clothes heavy with dampness, his skin tight and tender, seared by the severe heat. The air was still warm, but every now and then arose a rattle of breeze rushing along the floor of the washout—cool enough to remind them that winter had indeed come to the southern plains. Seamus dropped the blanket and stood, his eyes blinking, looking up the coulee, then down, finding Stillwell doing the same.

“You look a sight, Irishman,” said the young scout, grinning.

“Don't look so bad yourself, Jack, me boy.” He wrapped Stillwell in his arms fiercely. “Thanks, friend. You saved my arse again, didn't you?”

“Someone's gotta watch out for you, that's for sure.”

Donegan sighed, turning back to the wagon and sticking his head beneath the canvas. “C'mon out.”

They came out singly and in pairs, most still clutching their soaked blankets, shedding them only when they truly believed they were safe, that the fire had passed over them. The only celebration they allowed themselves at that moment was to mutter relief to one another.